Utopia's doom: the Graal as paradise of lust, the Sect of the Free Spirit and Jheronimus Bosch's so-called Garden of delights

Uittreksel

The so-called 'Garden of delights' by Jheronimus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) remains an absolutely iconic work in European art history. The highly complex and enigmatic image has frequently been interpreted as a paradisiacal utopia, in which people indulge playfully in erotic pleasure in harmony with nature. It is a visual utopia framed before Thomas More had actually coined the word in a book whose entirely unfrivolous blueprint for society could hardly differ more from Bosch's phantasm. More traditional art historians have identified Bosch's masterpiece as a painted warning against the sins of the body, more specifically that of 'lust', citing the image of Hell in the right wing in support. Vandenbroeck argues that these two interpretations need not preclude one another: Bosch painted a phantasmagorical false paradise that leads inexorably to ruin. He drew his inspiration from folk ideas about a semi-earthly, semi-supernatural erotic paradise or grail, in which those who entered could live in a dream-world of unbridled pleasure. But only until Judgement Day, upon which they would all wind up in Hell.